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Monday

Vintage Jack Black Interview

With Jack Black's new film, Bernie, directed by Richard Linklater, about to open, Culture Web looks back at Stephen Applebaum's encounter with the great man during his UK press duties for his first Linklater collaboration, School of Rock (2003). On the day, Black was in candid form, willing to discuss everything from films and music, to drugs, relationships, and his parents' divorce. We salute you, sir!

The critical success of Shool of Rock must feel
good after Shallow Hal. That was your first lead role and the film wasn't
terribly well received.

“Well, you know, it wasn’t as funny as I hoped it would be. But it was
still a good experience.”

Do you mean playing the
romantic lead?

“Yeah, it was something I had never done. It was something I joked about
doing. It was a joke with my agent. I said, ‘Yeah, tell all the studios I’m
ready for my romantic lead opposite Gwyneth Paltrow,’ and we were laughing
about it. Then the offer came in and I said, ‘What?’ But it was good to try to
carry it. I had always been the comic relief or the small supporting character
role, so that was cool. It was cool just to look at the Call Sheet and my
name’s up at the top. The top banana. The responsibility, it felt like an
accomplishment when I finished it. It did alright. Financially, it
made all its money back and stuff, and then some. But it wasn’t really me. The
character wasn’t right for me. But that’s alright.”

Did you worry that if School of Rock didn’t work, it could reflect badly on Tenacious D?

“Yeah, sure. That’s what made the movie more frightening than other
movies, in that I felt a responsibility to the rock; that the rock had to be good and legit. I know a lot
of musicians and if it wasn’t a good representation of the rock, then I would
be held accountable. Then, obviously, it could damage the ‘D’.But we’ve had a really good ride. The ‘D’ has already exceeded our
expectations. We were just fucking around, writing funny songs, performing and
having a really good time. We always thought, you know, making the album was
the pinnacle for Tenacious D. But now we’re going to make a fucking movie! So
was I worried that it would destroy the ‘D’? Yeah, that was a consideration. I
thought about that a little bit. But, ultimately, it came down to a good friend
of mine [Mike White] had written a very funny script, and it had to do with
rock. But you know what? It isn’t just the ‘D’ that is rock; I like rock. It’s
similar because, you know, they’re both based on me. So there’s room for both.”

One of the things I like about the
film is the fact that after people blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine, or,
say, blaming Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Suicide Solution’ for inspiring teenage suicides,
the film showed rock having a positive impact on these kids. Was that an
attractive message for you?

“I didn’t even think about that. I think it’s just cool showing a
teacher who is a little bit insane. But it doesn’t matter what you’re teaching,
if you love what you’re teaching you’re going to be a good teacher. The passion
and the intensity were things I thought would be fun to play.”

That intensity and passion also
comes across in the montage of rockers expressing themselves in their own way.
Like them, you have succeeded by being yourself. Has that been difficult? Have
people ever tried to mould you into something else?

“I wouldn’t have any career if I was trying to do what I thought was the
hip thing. Because even if I was, you know, in tip-top physical
condition, with all the latest hair products and shit, I still wouldn’t look as
handsome, or fucking whatever, as the studs they got marching around in
Hollywood. So I don’t even think about that. I’m just trying to do my own
thing.”

What do you think of that kind of
actor?

“I think it’s mostly squinters. It’s the acting school of squinting. And the reason you squint is
because you’re thinking about something deep and heavy. You’ve got a very
complex inner soul and life, but you’re also a really macho and powerful man.
You’re willing to kill, and make the proper sacrifice. It’s just a bunch of
fucking macho bullshit.”

What were your school days like?

“I was not a good student when it came to anything besides the arts. I
excelled when it came to singing and acting and drawing and painting, but math
and Spanish and English, and all the rest, I didn’t have the discipline. I
would fall asleep. I couldn’t stay awake.”

I read that you were like that at
U.C.L.A. So you were also like that at school?

“Yeah, I had trouble. Obviously I buckled down and forced it to work. To
get into U.C.L.A. I had to make a maximum effort. But it never felt right. It
felt like hell. People would say, ‘Enjoy these years, man. Because these are
the best years of your life. Trust me, I know. Because I’m out here in the real
world where it’s hell.’ And you know what? If that was true, I
would have killed myself. It couldn’t have been worse. I hated school.”

What was so bad about it for you?
Was it the lessons, the environment, other kids?

“I guess it
was just sort of being forced to study things that I had no interest in and
just wasn’t good at. I kept falling behind, and I had to work like three times
as hard to keep up. All I wanted to do was play, and I just felt like it was
getting in the way of my play. That was where my passion was. And, ultimately,
that is what acting is. You find a way. That’s a way to play for a living.”

So are youstill a kid at heart?

“Yeah, I found my way to stay a kid. Acting, it’s the best job in the world. I’m so spoiled.”

At what age did you stop growing up?

“Um, 19. You can’t be 20 on Sugar Mountain. Do you know that song? It’s
Neil Young. You can’t be 20 . . . [Sings in an almost falsetto tone].”

Your first acting job was an Atari
commercial. How old were you?

“Like, 13.”

You did one for Smurfberry Crunch
cereal and then gave up acting. Why?

“Yeah, it destroyed my career. With Smurfberry Crunch I lost all
my indie cred with the kids on the playground. It just wasn’t fun. I was going
to all those auditions and I couldn’t take the rejection. It was bumming me
out. And going on all those auditions was getting in the way of my play. So,
yeah, I quit that and just focused on the school plays. It wasn’t until after I
got out of college that I started going on auditions again.”

So after U.C.L.A.?

“Yeah.”

Where did your passion for the arts
come from? Your parents were satellite engineers, weren’t they?

“Yeah, they both worked for TRW. There’s no entertainment
people in my family. But it came from a Passover dinner. I’m a
Jew, my mother’s name was Cohen, my father’s name’s Black, and we went to at a
friend’s house, and after the dinner she said, ‘Let’s play the Freeze game’. I was like 11 or something and I
said, ‘What’s that?’ It’s an improvisational game where two people will be
doing a scene, like, ‘Man, it sure is weird being on this log,’ and then anyone
in the audience can say ‘freeze,’ and then you go up and tap one of the people
on the shoulder, you take their body position that they were in, and then you
go ‘Woof! Woof! I’m a dog,’ or whatever. I was immediately
addicted because I loved the attention, and the play. It was fun to play.”

You had five half-brothers and
sisters, didn’t you?

“No, I had three and then I had four. Now I have three again. One of
them died.”

So was that why you wanted the
attention, because of your siblings?

“No, no. My parents already gave me attention but it wasn’t enough. I
don’t know why, I just wanted extra love. I wanted to be
loved, luvvie-loved.”

Did they encourage your artistic
interests?

“Yes, they always came to my plays. They were very supportive.”

When did you discover that you had
the ability to make people laugh?

“Well, I thought I was good at it from the beginning. From the Freeze
game. It was one of those things where from a kid I thought I was the best and
the fastest and the strongest at everything. I thought I might have been the
fastest runner in the world until I went to my first track meet and came in dead last. I thought I might be, you know, all of
those things. But one by one my illusions were shattered. But the arts, I kept
the dream alive that I could be really good at it.”

How do you categorise yourself? Actor? Comedian? Musician?

“Just entertainer in the old-fashioned sense of the word. In the old
days, you know, if you were in showbusiness, you didn’t just know how to act;
you knew how to dance and sing, and do pratfalls, and play instruments. That
was the only way you could survive, because it’s too competitive to hang your
hat on just acting. So I cast a wide net. Plus I had interest in all those
things. I had fun doing them. And If I had fun I was going to pursue it.”

Does comedy or dramatic acting come
more naturally to you?

“Comedy. I like some drama, too. But not straight-up Plough in the
Stars-type angst ridden drama. My drama has to have some comedy in there. There
has to be something funny. But I also like drawing and painting. It‘s just that
I get bored. Even with the thing I love, acting, if it was just acting I would
start to hate it. So it‘s good to change gears, switch over to do some music,
do some album artwork, do some other stuff.”

Chris Farley was a big hero of
yours. What did he mean to you?

“He just made me laugh and he seemed like a force of nature with his
attack at those comedy scenes. I remember my favourite actor in college was
John Malkovich, because I saw a production on videotape of True West, this Sam
Shepard play, and he was so kick-ass funny and great in it, and funny and
scary, and intense and real, and I wanted to be like him. Then I saw him on
Saturday Night Live, many years later, and he was doing his character from Of
Mice and Men. He was touching the rabbits and being semi brain damaged, and
Chris Farley was in the scene with him, too, and he was doing the same
character that he was with the rabbit, so there was two Lennys. Then it was
revealed that Disney had decided that he was such a popular character in Of
Mice and Men, that they’d decided to make two of them, because that would be
more popular. Market research showed it would be a bigger hit if there’s two
Lennys. I remember how fucking funny Chris Farley was next to him, and I
thought, 'Okay, Chris Farley’s not really a straight-up actor, he’s more of a
comedian than an actor, but seeing him next to John Malkovich and just going
toe-to-toe, you wanted to watch him more than Malkovich in
the scene.' I thought there was a real fucking talent to that. It’s a subtle
difference when you’re focusing just on what’s going to make people laugh.
It’s not the same as acting where the main thing is being real and believable,
and I respected it and I wanted to do it. I wanted to have that, too.”

When I interviewed Rob Schneider, he said that Farley hated himself when he looked in the mirror each each morning, yet he was one of the funniest men you
could meet. A lot of comedians seem to be troubled. Do you think a lot of
humour comes out of a troubled life?

“I don’t know. But yeah, if you’re in comedy, or you’re in
acting, really there’s got to be a black hole in there that needs to be filled,
because you want the love and you’re doing it to get it, for the most part. I
think most actors are. Why, I don’t know.”

Do you recognise that in
yourself?

“Sure. Yeah, mine might have started when my parents divorced. They
divorced when I was 10. I think everybody’s parents get divorced
nowadays, so it’s nothing unusual. But there’s something about the divorce
where even if both the parents still love you, the fact that they hate each
other and can’t live with each other, makes you feel there’s something wrong
with you. That’s two sides of you that don’t like each other, so you don’t like
yourself in a weird way because of that, I think. I was thinking about it recently,
and that might have something to do with it. Yeah.”

What happened to you when you were a teenager, because suddenly went off the rails and, I believe, dabbled with cocaine?

“Yeah, I was doing some cocaine. I was hanging out with some weird
people, I was kind of looking for a father figure. Even though my dad was
always around, I just didn’t want him as my dad anymore. I wanted somebody else
to be my dad. I don’t know why. I wanted to be tough. I wanted to be cool and
tough, and on the streets with fucking gang kids. Yeah, I got in some trouble.
I stole money from my mom to get cocaine, got caught, and had fucking horrible
feelings of guilt. My parents pulled me out of the school I was in and put me
in this little school for, like, troubled youth. It’s like a reform school
situation, where there’s, like, a bodybuilding therapist on campus. It’s only
like 20 kids in the school and this real strong therapist. So if you were going
to try fight him, he could wrestle you down, force you to have therapy and
stuff. But I remember I was there and I had some therapy with him. I wanted to.
You didn’t have to have therapy but I saw him talking to kids in there and I
was, like, ‘I want to talk in there.’ I didn’t even know what I was going to
talk about but I was like, ‘Yeah, I want therapy.’ I went in there and talked
to him, and like within two minutes I had told him about stealing from my mom, and I just started crying. I had this
huge dam breaking release of emotion, and it felt really good. It was like
confession. Because, you know, I never had that. It felt good to release the
grease.”

How long were you there for?

“I was there for two years, for ninth and tenth grade. I then went to
another school, a private school for arts and sciences called Crossroads. It
was kind of a prep school. I kind of buckled down and tried to force some
productivity for school.”

Did you see the divorce coming?

“Yeah, they were fucking fighting all the time. Really horrible, screaming,
physical fights. It was scary and weird so it was good they divorced. But it’s
never pretty, it’s never good. It’s always fucked up.”

Did it affect your attitude to marriage?

“Yes, it definitely tweaked my sense of permanent companionship. I
just don’t want to do it [he has since married] unless I’m positive that it’s forever. Otherwise there
might be a divorce, and I don’t want to deal with that fucking shit.”

What kind of impact would you say
that School of Rock has had on your celebrity? Has there been a noticeable
change?

“Yeah, it’s had an effect. It’s just nice when people say, ‘Hey, you’re
the rock guy,’ as opposed to, ‘Hey, Shallow Hal.’ A lot of people say, ‘Hey,
Hallow Shall,’ I don’t know why. A lot of people mix that up.”

Is it all positive, the impact?

“No, the drag is you lose some privacy and you can’t really go to the
supermarket without stopping. It should just take 10 minutes but it takes an
hour because people want to talk to you about Gwyneth Paltrow, or talk about
‘Oh my God, you know what would be so great? If you could give an autograph to
blah blah blah.’ You end up trying to be invisible, and you keep stopping, and you
start getting angry.”

So next up is the Tenacious D movie.

“Yep.”

Have you cast it?

“No, we wrote the first draft and now we’re working on the second draft
and the songs.”

Is
that one of the positive effects of having a hit, that you can now do
this project?

“That’s the good thing, man. You do one, it makes money, then you can do
one that doesn’t.”

"Your piece is one of the most comprehensive, eloquent, and powerful discussions of the film I have read." Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing

"Stephen, this is a fabulous piece; you did a superlative job in communicating the film and its essence." Erik Greenberg Anjou, director of Deli Man

"I have to thank you. It's a very good [Mein Kampf] article, which you have written; it reflects very sharply and especially fairly the various positions." Dr. Christian Hartmann, Institute of Contemporary History Munich